Old Magic
by Demyrie
Summary: Winds are not born black. They require ashes, the destruction of some holy martyr in red fire, to darken so. Soon, they become so thick one cannot breathe. A chronicling of Magus' life. FleaxMagus implied.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This first chapter? DEDICATED TO WEIILA'S BIRFDAY BECAUSE I LOVE HER SO XD (And because I'm late on her birthday present kthx!)

This is my chronicling of Magus' life. My twisted, intentionally-jumbled, deliciously tortured chronicling of Magus' life and relationships with Flea and Schala and all other important lovelies.

Not really a story so much as a series of events.

Enjoy!

-.-.-Rules-.-.-

Flea is a he. Or rather, a Mystic hermaphrodite who prefers to recognize its male identity. I call him a her in the beginning because of the estranged third-person POV.

Any first-person POV will be Flea's.

OZZIE IS SO SCREWED UP I'M SORRY ;.; And rather gollum-ish.

Above comment applies so Slash too omg sosososo sry. (My mind insists they have no concrete personalities! Gag!)

There WILL be time-jumping. One chapter will be 590 AD, the next may be a non-italicized flashback.

Italics equals SPESHUL!

Flea is flamboyant sadistic love, Magus is tortured love. The End.

-.-.-.-

Old Magic

-.-.-.-

"Ozzie? Tell us again." The voice was sweet and practiced and cold.

The bare castle lay heavy and gray to all sides, seeming to give the four figures a wide berth. Three stood in the darkness, while one remained an inhuman lump curled on the ground.

"Where did you find this thing?"

"It popped into the mountains." The lowest grunted, shifting his horizontal weight from foot to foot, a flabby sound resulting.

"And why did you drag it in?" The inquirer continued, voice mockingly even.

"It stinks of magic." The last word was a relishing hiss. He gave the beast a tickle of his blunt fingers, leering as it retreated further into its shuddering ball.

_He was hunting, if that's what you could call it. He had left several treasures in this canary-yellow mountain stretch, and all the pesky leaves had tried to hide them, yes._

His goblins were milling around halfheartedly, shining bald heads like buoys sticking out of the thick bushes. Ozzie stood up straight as the croaking noise of a Warp Gate wound up behind him, nudging aside the fabric of reality for an impossibly inky, lapis-laced blackness. He honestly screamed. His Goblins scattered at the noise and the sudden airlessness. Ozzie ran away far faster than he would ever admit, and had almost heaved his bulk behind a bush when there came a thump, and the distinctive dwindling of the Warp Gate.

Still, he sat panting. Gone. Gone? Yes, gone. His skin no longer prickled like needles.

Heaving, gasping, he looked up and over. The centerpiece, the delivery, was obvious. A dwarfish little thing-- a human child--- was on its side on the damp autumn ground, cottony tuft of blue hair matted to his back. Soundless, he shook and shook, then gave a plaintive shriek and lay silent again.

Ozzie was going to seize it anyways, just for amusements sake. But when he came closer, always loving the swift, jibbering assault of the goblins like so many mice as they hefted the human child up onto their shoulders… he felt something. Or rather, smelt it.

The boy twisted and let out a hoarse moan, eyes clenched shut, sending up a whole new wave of smells which his minions were completely unaware of. They simply marched on. But, of course those ignorant squats didn't notice anything, but him? Ozzie the Great, Ozzie the Bold? He tailed the procession blindly, flat-footed as though love-struck, infatuated. His prize was a bright pale blur in his eyes, perched on muddy gnomes.

Yes, his minions knew nothing, but him?

He was a connoisseur, and the boy stank of his finest of wines. Little and squirming and ugly though he was, he was redolent of something dark and restless and nearly bottomless. Something pure and direct. Innate, not learned. Something absolutely impossible.

Old magic.

Magic. In a child.

This news fell flat. Meanwhile, the image of squat Ozzie sniffing wetly around their new prize, nudging into its white neck, was enough to make anyone shudder. The female gave birth to something that would have been a suffering sigh, had she been completely classless.

"Just like you, Ozzie, to ferret out the smell of something worthless. The Gate probably just left some magic sparkles on our little treat. Gilded it." She gave the child an experimental kick herself, frown deepening as it let out a throaty shudder. It was a wet, small thing, and duly disgusting. She flipped her cape away from it, firmly.

"It's human. It won't have a speck of magic in it-- best to kill it before it skitters off and reproduces."

"No, no. Shan't kill this one. I thought so at first-- thought I would, I mean, but then Ozzie got a whiff." He said wickedly. "He popped through that Gate and nearly scared Ozzie half to death, but I have him. We have him," he finished with gravity.

The pink one didn't seem impressed, and so the squat leader turned to his tall companion, nearly sniveling. "He stinks of old magic, Slash."

Slash's flat face constricted, hollow eyes suddenly searching.

"Old?" He said, in a voice as deep as a well.

"_Old_?" Repeated the beautiful one, and the word was a pursing of its petal-like mouth. "You tell _me_ a time when humans could use magic, and I'll tell you where their bones lie. This thing looks a split hair over three! The last of the old mages died out ages ago-- and you think you found one."

"It's not impossible." Ozzie said stoutly, while the pink one rolled its eyes and the stringy male remained placid and thoughtful.

"Ozzie, would it be rude to call you too much for yourself-- both in weight and bloated ambition?" She sighed now, only to have Ozzie raise himself to her waist height and fairly shake with rage.

"You will see!" He seethed upwards, something of a fat dog chained by its own weight.

"I'm certain we will see _something_." She said sweetly, smiling into his face.

Turning, she left her companions and the boy alone.

"I'm afraid I just can't fathom what."


	2. Chapter 2

"Zeal."

It was the first word the boy had spoken in weeks.

But then, that's an easy, silly phrase to offer. Most don't understand the _meaning_, nor the length nor breadth of that term-- weeks. It has become a neat, parceled expression.

Weeks meant impossible silence through those first hours when he awoke and we, full of skepticism, began our attack. Weeks meant no response when Ozzie cornered the child and bore down on him with his spit-slick, slat of a mouth. It meant terrified, wide red eyes, but no sound. It meant no conclusion for our curiosity, when the boy was still a new discovery.

It meant the scorn of being ignored by our own captive.

Weeks meant two meals a day, received with no intelligent sign of recognition, but a tight, sullen mouth and an empty plate upon turning your back.

Weeks meant strained nerves as Ozzie howled like a beast and turned Slash upon the child after two days, who beat him just enough to satisfy. It meant dragging hours of not knowing the slightest thing, but suspecting everything.

It meant starvation. It meant anything and everything to rend this creature apart, to expose the fleshy innards of knowledge.

It meant finding the disturbing strength of our new little beast piece by piece, who was able to go silently for twenty-three days in a new, terrifying atmosphere which threatened his every breath. We expected that austere tolerance to break every other moment but found it colder and dryer than ever. He was as unyielding as someone five times his age, and the wrongness he radiated was unmistakable.

We began to-- graciously, never seriously-- doubt its humanity. We were certain it never talked, even to itself, and were disturbed despite ourselves. But then it spoke that one word.

"Zeal." It finally croaked. Its face had lost its childish pudge, and its ribs were bare. "What has happened to Zeal?"

"Zeal?"

The word, held in such importance-- twenty-three days of importance, five hundred and fifty-two hours of weight-- putrefied in Ozzie's mouth. He sneered.

"What are you mumbling about?"

Perhaps he was irritated that the creature's first word hadn't paid homage to all the pain it had experienced in his care. He found nothing in the thing's eyes but defiance.

"Zeal. The Magical Kingdom." He paled even as he spoke, clambering to his small white feet. He was filthy, naked and disgusting, but still shone as white as any sandstone block. "Does it live on?"

An odd, sour silence drifted between us all, promptly shattered by Ozzie's gut-deep guffaw.

"If it even existed!" Ozzie roared, and I recoiled the slightest bit from his excessive brutishness. Always the one to shout. Both Slash and I were most interested in the boy, and made no move to conceal it. Ozzie, I'm sure, wept from his lack of audience… or simply became more obsessed with proving himself.

"What?" The boys said urgently—or rather, exhaled it, eyes widening.

"I said, if it even existed, runt." Ozzie sneered, not yet angered.

"How do you speak?" The boy stepped up to him, scandalously close to his wide bulk. He stood ridiculously small next to the Mystic, all starved limbs and caving buttocks. I raised an eyebrow as Ozzie took one stomp forward, fat lips drawing back.

"However Ozzie wants, you worm." He growled. His hackles—or perhaps his spongy green boils—rose in a lather.

"What right have you to keep me here, starve me-- then tell me the magnificent Zeal is gone? Where am I! You're lying!" The boy nearly shrieked, suddenly writhing in a rage. "Liar!"

Ozzie was and is a liar. I admit to this. He would not admit to it, but would not deny it. However, he was in just the right state—coming down from two weeks of agony—to vastly overexploit any possible sensitivity.

"Ozzie isn't any liar, you filth!"

Small, piggy eyes lighting, he swung back and slapped the boy across the face so hard I felt the tremble in my feet as the thing hit the floor.

Then our beloved leader waddled out in a rage, muttering and growling and generally feeling much better, I'm _sure_. But the boy was still as death, white face cocked to the side. While he usually stayed still until all of us left, seeking safety in 'death', this silence and this stillness was different. A force other than self-preservation held him down. His lashes were heavy and silken across his red, lidded eyes. After a moment his lips parted, and his naked little chest moved in breath.

"It is gone?" He spoke to the shadows, as though he knew we were there.

"Thousands and thousands of years ago." Slash spoke softly, having none of Ozzie's pride. I watched as the boy processed this. "Many believed it a myth."

"Then there is nothing left." He whispered.

Perfunctory and quiet, we waited for an explanation. We waited for a reason why this strange, cold little human would ask so reverently about a kingdom 11,400 years gone. But he found no weakness which permitted him to share. There was only silence.

We left him there, flat on his back.


	3. Chapter 3

He never crawled into the white cradle of her lap.

He never sat there but at her doe-eyed, pleading request, and even then he walked to her. Too often she was poised there in her quarters, slim and pale, and when he entered-- bringing a heavy silence with him that was too proud to be expectant-- she would set her book down and reach for him, simple sweetness overwhelming any grudge at this action. She always smelled of cream and clean flowers, and held him close to her heart.

But when she came back from _there_, she smelled of dirt.

The whole palace would coil like a snake, but the strike never came. They simply muttered and plotted and skulked out of sight as she passed with bright eyes and snow on her shoulders, peppered with dark, pungent remnants of everything unholy to Zeal. Dirt did not belong in this white realm-- and now, it became a cancerous blot on their purist of saints.

Janus did not sit in her lap much. But the explicit image of those grubby children with raw, wormlike feet struggling into her lap like beached fish with open mouths made him cold with disgust and rage. The sight of her dropping her cloak for cleaning only to know it would be dirtied again within weeks… furious. It made him averse to her touch. It made him duck from under her perfumed fingers, which were so often on the grimy, sweat-slimed brows of the Earthbound.

Janus hated this. He hated her absence, but he hated her more when she came back.

Schala seemed to sense this disruption as a malignant vibration; a coldening of the small boy before her. His unspoken anger was a specter, glaring tragically at her every benign action. A simple smile would drive that rusty dagger further in, and he would soon retreat to Alfador's company with resentful eyes and a curled lip-- perhaps leaving her with her arms outstretched.

Her punishment.


	4. Chapter 4

The hand was indescribable. It was rosy pink, delicately tapered, but beyond this, it was a perfect mesh of the two most recognizable sides of the universe-- male and female.

Androgynous seemed too crude for such a creature.

Flea slipped one finger into the clear water. A mental twitch, and the air around the slender pink stalk twisted, expelling an alluring circle of pink. It, with an unheard sigh, morphed into a heart and blushed itself away into the rippling water. The mage drew the weapon back into his lap and turned to his charge.

"Some of us send out vibrations, little Janus." Flea told him, cajolingly. "Vibrations tell us lots of things about magic—important things we need to know."

Janus sat flat beside him, eyes set unflinchingly ahead. Through the weeks, Flea noted this ungenerous behavior, and found the new pet to be all levels of morose. The boy seemed to absorb everything without ever interacting with anything-- preserving himself.

Unfazed, Flea took the small white hand in his and moved it, flaccid, to the water. Janus stared down at the offending limb without emotion.

"Watch."

Flea made the air twist again and his hand warmed as though to produce something more-- perhaps another practiced heart-- but the hand beneath his own clenched and the rosy glow was violently sucked in. It pulsed outward a moment later as a bristling yellow, which stabbed into the water and left it a poisonous black.

Smiling, one or two hairs out of place, Flea calmly drew their hands out of the water.

Janus, eyes wide, stared at the black cloud. All the fish had crowded to the opposite edge of the pond to avoid it, and the splotch held an unnatural stillness. The calm pink figure beside him drew his gaze next, as though the boy was sifting for some answer-- any reason for the cloud-- but he caught himself. He shut down instantly. Janus did not snatch his hand back from the repulsive figure, but instead pulled steadily until Flea released him.

Flea studied him. The empowered hand fell and was kept perfectly limp, as if to erase the act. He smiled coyly.

"Well. Aren't you an uppity little thing?" He said mischievously, chiding him. The words were as a tickle to the ribs, but to one who detests touch. "Who said you could poke your nose in on my spell? Tricks like that could get you into trouble."

Janus tightened under the playful tone, cold and static next to Flea's invasive charms.

"You wanted me to," Janus muttered thickly.

One delicate eyebrow arched at the half-admission. But such a stalwart tone! Why not play a tad? He was obviously smarter than he looked.

"Oh! So you stole my love to make your war… because I wanted you to?" He giggled sweetly at his own witticism, then let the question hang. Janus looked abruptly to the side, sensing the silence twist into to tendrils, sifting for revealing information.

"… Or because you couldn't help it?"

The white hand clenched, and Flea had his answer.

As though sensing the Mystic's victory, Janus stayed silent, but resumed his scornful glare. The best defense is a best offense, after all—scorn, scorn and yet more scorn. Silly urchin. Flea shrugged, flipping his braid over his shoulder and expelling a sweet-smelling puff of gin-like perfume.

"Oh, who am I to say so?" He sighed, then shot the boy a meaningful glance under his lashes. "Your hand could have a mind all its own."

"He knows I'm useless."

Ah. Ozzie. Flea knew what that meant. It was a plea for escape. If he's useless, he can't darn well be used, can he?

Flea drew close to him, lips poised quietly. A promised kiss in every word.

"Do you not want to help us, dove?" A slender hand reached for his hair, but he jerked as though stung, suddenly coming to life at the intrusion.

"I'm useless!" He insisted. He was bitter now, but in all the wrong ways. Ah, these children were such transparent-- if endearing-- beasts. Flea waited for the other shoe to fall as Janus' fists clenched.

"I can't help you!" He yelled, then: "I _won't_!"

Wordlessly, Flea reached over and grasped him around the wrist once more. But no twist or travel to the water was needed-- Janus' hand twitched independently, hostile energy arcing out. Flea smiled then, watching Janus' betrayed gaze as it sunk in.

"Vibrations, precious," he said sultrily, bending close to his ear again. "Best thing about them? They're endearingly straightforward. They don't have ulterior motives. Not like little boys."

The pink hand slid away.

Silence fell between them for a good while, until Janus said abruptly:

"I'm not like her."

Flea frowned after a moment, and then only because he had figured out the half-concocted allusion.

The mysterious female again. 'Her'. Flea felt the faintest tingling of suspicion… even jealousy. Who was it that took up so much of this pretty, tragic little human's mind? _He_ was with it every day-- molding, shaping, cajoling-- and he still paled in comparison to _her._

Indeed, jealous was the word. Silly, yes, but Flea wasn't above basic jealousy. After all, was else made life interesting but petty distractions?

"He knows I'm useless." Janus muttered again, eyes lowered. How was it that repeating things proved validity in human's minds? It was another fumbling stab at exemption, and a poor one at that. Flea, however, didn't feel like rolling his eyes at this triteness. His little human's despair drew him in, cold as it was, and he gave a scornful little laugh. Oh, Janus had so much to learn.

Still, the boy had an intense fear of being used. What had he seen or done?

"Big and smelly as he is, Ozzie isn't the boss around here, darling. The imp's a placeholder, until someone more… worthy comes along." Flea murmured, sharing a cloying secret—he touched Janus between his small shoulders, just enough to make him draw away. Unfazed, he continued in his coy, confidential tone. Worming into the boy.

"He doesn't know much of anything, past his meals and the state of his chair. The only thing I'd keep of him is his ungodly nose, and even then I wouldn't touch it. I, on the other hand… well. Beauty isn't everything." He gave an indulgent smirk. "I see things."

Janus seemed unmoved by this, staring quietly off into the distance. The quiet pond dripped and croaked around them, wind stirring the reeds.

"I can tell you're hiding something." Flea told him carefully, finally. Janus stiffened. "A special something, perhaps, that you've never told anyone about? Are you trying to trick us, prince?"

The first shudder of fear was so very subtle, only Flea could have seen it.

The boy forced it into submission so quickly it was merely a tremor wandering up his spine. It would have been invisible to a brute like Ozzie, and wasted on a dry creature like Slash. Thrilled, Flea tightened the cage.

"We'll take it out of you." He whispered into Janus' whimsically slanted ear, drawing one finger along the innocent curve of his cheek, which contracted invisibly. "Whatever magical castle you toppled from, you aren't going back. You are ours, but you can be your own if you surpass us. It's time you learned that, dove. Owned until proven free."

Flea knew the danger of revealing this to him—to anyone who had fared as poorly as this creature had under their care. Most would rebel, if given hope. But there was a means to an end, and the terms to shape the means. Janus would rise knowing this, but the motivation to rise would be merely self-preserving. Flea had, by a delicate tip of the scales, turned the boy's own fear of being used against him. Janus would strive for freedom, never for domination.

But so very much would happen in between… that he would never have a choice in the matter.

A bullfrog croaked gaudily in the depths of the reeds. Forcing Flea's sculpted arms away from him, Janus clambered to his feet and darted off, pale hair trailing behind him.

Flea watched him until he had disappeared, then rose and headed in the same direction.

-.-.-.-

The chamber was dim and dank, squeezed by its low ceiling. Just, some could argue, like its occupant. Ozzie sat at his table, rolling scrolls hastily from side to side, until the door creaked. The arrival ducked into the room-- Flea's glowing pink skin looked sweetly out of place, as though a blessing to the dull atmosphere.

Ozzie stilled, vaguely expectant. Though an air of confidentiality lingered, a simple hand on the imp's shoulder was foregone. To say Flea didn't appreciate touching Ozzie was an understatement.

Flea, poised at a safe distance, simply hovered where he stopped, radiating intrigue. His small, petal-like mouth was amused.

"Well?" Ozzie finally grunted, turning to look at his withholding lieutenant.

Flea paused a moment before offering, in echoing simplicity: "He has something."

"You'd never know it from the look of him." Ozzie countered doubtfully, waiting for Flea to elaborate. Ozzie watched as the slim mage seemed to float by, eyes elsewhere. The Mystic knew the eccentric bastard would have liked it even better to keep it to himself, dropping sugar-coated hints, but he was content enough with this meager piece-- as a start.

"Don't let up on him." Flea said, voice luxurious with knowledge. "He's ferreting something away-- something strong."

"Something we want?"

The flower-like mystic seemed to wilt, round hips swinging hopelessly to one side. Ah, Ozzie the Crude. So painfully blunt. No room for frivolous speculations or expounding.

Despite the ruined moment, Flea's brown eyes gleamed.

"If we play our cards right? He could be everything we want."

Ozzie's wide slat of a mouth cracked in awe.

The next day, Janus produced a spark from his hands.


	5. Chapter 5

"Why do you do this?" He had asked once. He glared up over Alfador, who sad silently in his lap. She knew what he spoke of, but he had to add, poisonously, to let his distaste be known.

"Why do you waste your time down in those hovels?"

"Oh, Janus." She murmered, as though the words alone pained her. She looked at him as though he himself were an Earthbound- full of pity. "If you came with me, you would understand."

And she knew he wouldn't.


	6. Chapter 6

They were in one of the larger rooms of the castle, chosen because of the size. Magic couldn't be done properly in close quarters—not when dealing with a beginner.

Janus sat attentively, a doll-like speck of pale hair when viewed from the top. Ozzie's rumbling voice was easily drowned out.

"And here I wondered why Ozzie kept you, Flea." Slash muttered.

Flea, hovering next to the other Mystic where he was propped amphibian-like against the ceiling beams, gave Slash a scornful glance. His fellow did not notice, but rather remained fixed on Janus, that wry intelligent face shifting in the presence of potential.

Following the fat imp's instructions, Janus clapped his hands far below them. Though nothing came of it visually, they all felt the air twinge.

"You work wonders." He finished.

Flea smiled, one fingertip drifting to his sweet mouth.

"Well… beauty isn't everything." He said softly.

His favorite bit of irony.


	7. Chapter 7

Bath time was always interesting.

It had become a bit of a tradition with us. When he was younger, he refused to be touched in any way (but then, at that time he had still believed that streaking off into the forest would somehow help him. We always found him within the hour). But sadly, the little beast had clearly never washed himself, and would roll into thimbleweed and come up with all kinds of rashes and other red itching things. On this too he would refuse help—but finally I bundled him into the water and gave him a proper washing, just because it _irked_ me so to see him so disgusting.

Afterwards, I simply continued to bathe him. The 'servitude' in it seemed to appeal to his cold little self, and I found it pleasurable to stroke and coddle him so—so it continued unquestioned. It was not intimate in the least, but a chore of sorts. Wash and be washed.

But today, bath time was to become a bit more productive. Janus had been simply blooming in magic for a very, very long time, but lately he had reached a stagnant stretch. I was told to… talk with him. We still had a long way to go if we were to have our way with him.

Own or be owned. Perhaps he had forgotten?

He lay away from me, long white body drifting in the pool. Pointedly ignoring me had become an art, but now he was rather passive. I enjoyed him this way—he let me fondle his hair, which was a rarity. Still, when I came an inch closer than necessary, he drew closer to the shore, avoiding the brush of my thighs on his.

At first, my body had been a horrific novelty for the child. _My_ body! Our first bath, he was too occupied with screaming to notice anything of interest, but the instant I stripped in a more casual, shriek-free setting, he saw the… anomalies? Surprises, I say.

I would say he was entranced, but I know the callow human mind too well for that. I once tried to take a pretty, strapping young woodsman for a lover when I was still biting ankles myself, and I will NEVER forget how… ooh, I have no words. During a tryst he tried to make generous use of his ax and in the end I had to kill him—and without an inch of regret, mind you. I was so offended I swore never to touch a squirming human again.

Janus, of course, is more than an exception.

I studied him as he lay there, as I had done many times before. Already, his time with our charming caravan had taken its dues. Our contraband's skin had whitened, dusky lavender blotting out human, fleshy shadows-- as though someone had powdered the china boy with an artist's brush, taking care to mind the crevices.

But there were other differences. He had elongated, thinned. He was—what, entering his pubescent years? Human chronology is so fickle, but I could see his body changing. He was older, yet still a child—though our races hardly compare. Young and beautiful as I am now, I _might_ sprout my first gray hair on his deathbed. If I'm lucky, it will be another 20 years.

But now, there were other matters to attend to besides gawking.

Janus did not stir as I approached—and for the first time in years I touched him fully. I slid my palms over his shoulders, squeezed and toyed. He twitched, discomfort roiling inside him. It was some subtle power play, though we each won when he did not pull away.

"What do you want?" I asked.

Janus grew taut. My question was unexpected, and I intended it to be so.

"Do you know what you want, little Janus?" I asked again—teasing, tittering.

I had not moved my hands. Another moment under my grip and he squirmed with some deep-rooted discomfiture. He was surprised, perhaps, that he could not answer that simple question. But wanting is a secondary emotion

His sister. His pampered life. All far beyond his reach-- far beyond _wanting_. All he could obtain was within his reach, and he wanted none of it. Defiant, destructive little Janus.

"There is nothing left for me." He said finally, coldly shrugging off my hands and drifting further into the reeds. My fingers lingered, trailing through his impressive hair, and though he could not see me, I smiled.

Needing was the only option. We had crafted this environment especially for that.

Self-preservation versus domination.

Suddenly I was draped over him, slick breasts pressed flat against his boyish back. Before he could recoil I cupped his chin and, like so many years ago, cocked his ear to my mouth.

"So why not take everything?" I whispered.

He froze and I closed my eyes, simply feeling him against me. I held a warm, trembling, fearing body, brimming with a concoction of revulsion and suppression, and I reveled in it.

But even as he ducked out of my grasp as rat slurps through a hole, wrenching himself up onto the shore in his haste… even as he ran and never glanced back, I could see him affected.

The idea had not left him unscarred.


	8. Chapter 8

He can remember having a nightmare-- but of what, he isn't certain.

There is always a recurring color. Red. But it is not a flat red, nor a fiery red, but rather an oily, insidious red that is felt rather than seen. That is what woke him and sent him inching out of bed, sneaking past his nurse and onto the chill perfect marble floor.

This is when he went to _her_ instead of Schala.

He had had nightmares before, but they had been getting worse lately. His mother had been spending more and more time downstairs with the mages, so scary nights were the only real time he got to see her—and maybe he saw her once or twice on his own, even if he didn't have a nightmare.

He would tug on her hand, which hung over the bed, and she would raise her magnificent plumed head up to look at him. Then she smiled and said his name so softly that he stopped being scared.

She always pulled aside the thick purple blankets and tucked him next to her, and her arms made him a part of her. They slept deeply and if the red came again Janus didn't remember. And in the morning, he liked to see the nurses come in and scold him, only to be scolded by his mother. She would hug him and stroke his hair for a while longer, until she woke him up and dressed him—a rare treat.

Afterwards, she kissed him on each cheek and told him he was a naughty boy, tricking her like he did. He only smiled his small secret smile, which earned him another kiss.

'Remember to have Schala practice her harp,' she always told him. It was his _job_.

But he had not seen his mother in a long time. She was _there_, but he couldn't see her or hug her because she was with the gurus all the time-- and he had just had another nightmare.

The Hall was light even at night, because all the white turned to blue. The fountains tinkled quietly on the lower levels. Her big golden door was always closed, but she kept it unlocked just for him.

He pattered up to it, pink bare feet cold on the gleaming marble. Usually a single clumsy push was all that was needed, and he raised his arms to do it—but the door held fast. Confused, he let his full weight fall against it and slipped down to his butt, bunching his nightdress up around his belly.

Up on his feet, he tried again, shoving more and more anxiously with his little hands. The door began to rattle every other push, and his face started to screw up and turn red because he'd just had a nightmare and somebody had locked his mother's door.

Maybe they were still in there with her, because there were sounds coming from inside. There was a banging noise that was getting faster and faster, and a gruff noise like a dog growl and he thought he heard his mother in there too.

Then his mother cried out and scared him, and he whimpered and pushed at the door more, so, so close to tears. His mother was in trouble but by the time his soft little arms had given up and he'd sat down crying, the lock finally came undone and he had to scoot out of the way of the door.

He hid a little, because the thing that came out was big and hairy. When it looked around, Janus saw it was a man with long wavy hair. The man didn't see him at first. But when he made to close the door, he looked down and spotted him. His thick eyebrows rose and he looked back, then carefully closed the door behind him.

"Well. Hello, there." He whispered cheerily, but something in his big teeth bothered Janus, so he scooted back more. The man just looked around, suddenly, like he was happy.

"Shhh." He pressed a finger to his lips and walked off, smoothing his clothes. Janus watched him with eyes that had been startled dry, keeping still until he was well out of sight. When he felt it was safe, he toddled anxiously into his mother's room. He hoped she was okay and not hurt.

The room was dark and the blankets were everywhere. But her hand wasn't hanging over the edge of the bed, so he tried to climb up and get it. Each time he slipped and fell back down, over and over again, until finally she rose up and looked at him.

He raised his arms to be picked up, but she only turned over, rustling deeper into her purple blankets until he couldn't see her.

"Not now, Janus," she muttered, voice ugly and sleepy. "Go back to bed."

He stood there with his arms up for a few more minutes, then waved them with a tiny protesting sound. He even tried climbing back up onto the bed again. But she was asleep and would not reach out to him.

He had to walk back to his room and climb up into his bed for the first time. He was left with a cold, incredibly empty feeling, and cried until his woke his nurse.

Later, he decided the man had hurt her, to make her act like that. And he was strong and mean because it happened again and again and again. The door was locked again and again and again. That was when his mother was stolen from him. That was when he turned to Schala. Moreover, that was when the oily red moved from his head into the palace.

And when he learned the man's name, he hated Dalton with all his heart.


End file.
